Demolition started as scheduled Wednesday morning, with heavy machinery tearing apart the road piece by piece and loading the Belgian blocks into a dump truck. Click play on the video above.
The stones will be entombed in a giant concrete box to be used in a future project. City Hall has repeatedly promised they’ll track each stone and incorporate them back into Derby in some manner.
An old-timer watching the show Wednesday put a handwritten sign on the ground. “History,” it read.
The sentiment summarized the backlash Derby government received after The New Haven Register published a story in advance of the road’s destruction and The Valley Indy published a letter opposing the move from former Derby Alderman Markanthony Izzo Tuesday.
Lower Caroline Street had been unpaved for as long as anyone could remember — click here for information from The Electronic Valley — and word of its destruction triggered a flood of emails to Derby City Hall and comments on social media.
The road is thought to date back to around 1870, according to the Electronic Valley.
The road is viewed as historic, though it is not formally listed anywhere as a landmark. Generations of Derby residents clearly have an emotional connection to the old hill that intersects Main Street.
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The Register story on Caroline Street was picked up by the Associated Press, which triggered reports on Connecticut television news stations, such as the one embedded below:
Or this one from FOX 61:
The road work was almost delayed during a subcommittee meeting of the Derby Board of Aldermen Tuesday night in City Hall.
The public clearly didn’t know Derby government was planning to remove the old stones, though the matter was discussed during public meetings (albeit sometimes briefly) in January, February, April, May and June.
At Tuesday’s Aldermanic subcommittee meeting, Second Ward Aldermen Art Gerckens suggested delaying the work until the full Board of Aldermen could discuss it during its regular meeting Sept. 22. That would have given the public an opportunity to weigh in, on the record.
But Derby Public Works Director Anthony DeFala noted the city had already signed a contract and the work was scheduled to start the next morning. He worried about potential legal ramifications.
Click the play button below to watch a brief discussion by an Aldermen subcommittee Tuesday night.
The money to pay for the project is coming from $3.7 million in road repairs Derby voters approved in 2014.
Lower Caroline Street’s cobblestones were not on the list of roads to be addressed, but the city’s paving jobs had come in under budget — so the city decided to use $187,000 to repair Caroline Street and two other Derby roads.
Why Caroline Street?
At an Aldermen’s meeting in January, Second Ward Alderman Joseph Martino, who is employed by Derby Public Works, noted his department was receiving reports about people slipping and falling on the road.
In February, DiMartino raised the issue again. DeFala noted his department received a complaint about a person falling on the road. He also noted the road was difficult to maintain in the winter.
In April, Gerckens asked about the road. Mayor Anita Dugatto mentioned searching for grant funding for the road, though the meeting minutes do not put her statement into context. Second Ward Alderman Ron Sill said the road was being discussed by the Derby Road Bond committee, a subcommittee of the Derby Board of Aldermen.
The Road Bond Committee’s members are Sill, Alderman Anthony Staffieri and Alderwoman Barbara DeGennaro.
In May, the Road Bond Committee discussed Caroline Street. During that meeting, DeFala noted the road was becoming “almost impossible to maintain.” Each repair job further compromises the stones, DeFala said.
The minutes from that meeting are posted below.
BOA ROAD BOND MINUTES MAY 10 2016 by The Valley Indy on Scribd
DeFala told The Valley Indy Tuesday the road was just too dangerous for cars.
The stones were terribly uneven, repair jobs had made the road worse, the shoulder on the south side near Main Street had collapsed — and the last few winters made a bad situation worse.
“We had severe ice during a few winters. The road heaved everywhere. You have constant trip and falls. During a normal rainstorm, we have cars sliding down the road. The road is in such bad condition, the cars are hopping. One bump, your back wheels are up and you’re sliding down into Main Street,” DeFala said.
Ron Sill said city government has been hearing complaints about the road for a long time.
“It has been discussed for years. Everybody is thinking there’s this pristine road there. But if you look at it, there are cobblestones missing. There are issues with safety. It really needs to be addressed,” Sill said.
The Caroline Street job — along with two other road repair jobs — was put out to bid in August.
As the road work started Wednesday morning, Caroline Street resident Adam Pacheco took his friendly 6‑year-old Rottweiller, Rosie, for a walk.
Pacheco said he liked the cobblestone. It was one of the reasons he moved in. But the city hadn’t properly maintained the road in years, which made traveling on the road even more challenging. Grass grew between the stones. The city essentially had to “mow” the street, he said. When it rained, the road was more than slick.
Pacheco said he was OK with removing the stones if rebuilding the road with the stones was too expensive.
“Something had to be done,” he said.
Derby resident Tom Lionetti was not as diplomatic. He indicated city government was thumbing its nose at local history.
Pacheco’s sentiments, though, were echoed previously by statements from Derby elected officials.
“The taxpaying residents there have suffered too long with nothing being done to alleviate the problem (on Caroline Street). It is a steep road. It’s a slippery road. It’s dangerous,” Alderman Gerckens said at a meeting Tuesday.
But Gerckens, reacting to pushback from the public, pointed out Caroline Street had never been listed on an Aldermen’s agenda, which limited the public’s ability to know what was happening to beloved “Cobblestone Hill.”
“It’s not on any agenda that I’ve read. It wasn’t voted on by the full board,” Gerckens said. “It never gave the public the opportunity to weigh in on it.”
He had hoped to delay the project for at least a week.
But the road was apparently grouped in with “phase three” road bond matters at an Aldermen’s meeting in May.
One option apparently never discussed — simply closing part of the road to vehicles, leaving the stones intact. It’s a suggestion that was often repeated Tuesday on social media.
The disconnect between local government and the public over lower Caroline Street also raises questions about communication within Derby City Hall.
Derby government only recently launched its own website — and its creation didn’t have universal support.
While neighboring Seymour and Ansonia governments maintain active, two-way communication with citizens through social media, Derby does not.
Ansonia and Seymour also broadcast local legislative meetings on Comcast public access, and use “Code Red” messages to raise awareness of community events or votes. Derby does not.
Would any of those methods prevented residents from being taken by surprise?
That’s hard to say, Mayor Dugatto said.
“You never know what people are going to comment on or not,” the mayor said. “We did discuss it at meetings, and I’ve discussed it at few senior (citizen) meetings. Everybody feels bad about the road, but what do we do? Wait another 10 years until we might have the money to fix it?”
Dugatto said Main Street Derby is on its way forward. Residents and city government are waiting anxiously for the state to widen Route 34, a project scheduled to start in 2017.
The city is also working on a new plan for its redevelopment zone on the south side of Main Street. Dugatto’s administration wants to hear from residents. Click here for info on an upcoming forum.
